Welcome to Post-Democracy

Welcome to Post-Democracy

That the EU is no friend of democracy is not exactly news, but this fascinating filleting of Europe’s technocratic cult is a must-read. The author appears to be on the left, but so what? He’s focusing on the process, and that in this context that is what matters.

The trigger for the piece is a documentary about Italy’s problems:

What is much more worthy of being flagged is how the filmmakers even as they lament the dismantling of democracy under Berlusconi, they fawn over Mario Monti and effectively endorse the undemocratic shenanigans that it took to parachute him into power, as well as the ongoing democratically unorthodox manoeuvres that have been employed to achieve such policies both domestically and across Europe….

But there probably is a glint of truth to this figure. And these people are not natural conservatives. These are people who adore Obama and hated Bush. People who support gay marriage – who may even be gay. People who support EU justice commissioner Viviane Reding’s push to get more women in the boardroom.

And they’ll say that they of course support democracy – and think that they mean it. But at the same time, when you really push them, they say that they just don’t trust ordinary people to vote ‘the right way’. They support EU efforts to take fiscal decision-making out of the hands of parliaments, lest voters spend their way to oblivion. After a few drinks, they dismiss ‘most people’ as stupid. A few drinks more and they call them ‘the mob’.

It’s this lack of trust in regular people, this unacknowledged attitude that there is a group of experts who know better than everyone else, this belief that there need to be checks on democracy, that frightens. Girlfriend in a Coma‘s emphasis on the bright, young, hyper-educated Italian diaspora speaks volumes about the filmmakers’ lack of confidence in all other sorts of Italian voters.

The Erasmus-generation fans of this film will be hip. They’re crisply dressed. They like independent cinema and museums and all the right music. They’re friends of mine, and they’re a great laugh and multi-lingual and smart.

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